Director, Active Directory Engineering

USAA•San Antonio, TX

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, Active Directory Engineering leads the engineering organization responsible for the directory platforms, infrastructure, and services that support USAA’s Workforce Identity and Access Management capabilities. The role owns the strategy, architecture, engineering, modernization, resiliency, and lifecycle of Active Directory and related enterprise directory services, ensuring they remain secure, highly available, scalable, and able to support evolving identity and technology needs. The position establishes engineering strategy and multi-year roadmaps, sets standards and operational expectations, and leads modernization across hybrid identity architecture, security hardening, automation, cloud integration, legacy dependency reduction, and modern identity patterns. It partners with Workforce IAM, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Cloud, and application engineering teams, and oversees information security risk, governance, compliance, operational resilience, and continuous monitoring for its domain. The Director also represents USAA in discussions with external regulators, manages organizational budgets and staffing, and leads recruiting, development, retention, coaching, and performance management. The role requires working in the office four days per week and may be based in San Antonio, Texas, or Plano, Texas. Relocation assistance is available. USAA does not provide visa sponsorship for this position.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Information Security, Information Technology, Computer Science, Business Administration, Information Systems/Management, or a related field; or four years of relevant education and/or experience.
Eight years of related information security experience in one or more domains, such as cybersecurity, IAM, information assurance and governance, operational risk management, or IT, including significant accountability for projects, programs, processes, or policies.
Three years of direct team lead, supervisor, or management experience in an Information Security or Information Technology domain.
Four years researching, designing, or implementing technology, information security, or cybersecurity solutions in a large financial institution or large enterprise information security program, with a record of delivering results in compliance with federal, state, and regulatory information security and risk management requirements.
Expert knowledge of relevant risk management and information security regulations and standards, such as FFIEC, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the FFIEC Cybersecurity Assessment Tool, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, and PCI DSS.
Strong knowledge of security technologies, including cryptography, authentication, authorization, and controls.
Strong knowledge of IT risks and experience implementing security solutions.
Knowledge of threats, vulnerabilities, attack methods, and countermeasures for web-based applications, networks, and cybersecurity solutions.
Demonstrated financial acumen, including budgeting, forecasting, and executing budgets for an information security, cybersecurity, or technology support function.
Expert business acumen in business operations, risk management, industry practices, and emerging trends.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical analyses to non-technical audiences.

Nice To Haves

10 or more years of progressive leadership experience in IAM, cybersecurity, or enterprise infrastructure.
Five or more years leading large-scale identity engineering or authentication organizations.
Deep expertise with Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Entra ID.
Experience leading OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, and modern federation architectures.
Strong understanding of Keycloak, Layer7 API Gateway, and enterprise authentication platforms.
Experience implementing workload identity, machine identity, and service-to-service authentication strategies.
Knowledge of policy-based authorization frameworks, including Open Policy Agent (OPA).
Experience driving Zero Trust architecture and identity-centric security initiatives.
Demonstrated success leading cloud identity transformations across hybrid environments.
Strong understanding of cybersecurity frameworks, regulatory requirements, and audit controls.
Proven ability to build high-performing engineering and security teams.
Excellent executive communication and stakeholder management skills.
Relevant certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CCSP, Azure Security Engineer, or equivalent.

Responsibilities

Lead the Active Directory Engineering organization and establish its engineering strategy and multi-year technology roadmap for Active Directory and related enterprise directory infrastructure, integrations, and services.
Ensure the security, reliability, resiliency, availability, scalability, and recoverability of enterprise directory services through engineering standards, platform health metrics, capacity planning, lifecycle management, disaster recovery, and operational readiness expectations.
Partner with Workforce IAM, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Cloud, and application engineering teams to translate identity and authentication requirements into scalable engineering capabilities.
Lead modernization of enterprise directory services, including hybrid identity architecture, Active Directory security hardening, automation, legacy dependency reduction, cloud integration, and adoption of modern identity patterns.
Own critical security domains or capabilities, develop multi-year roadmaps, and lead managers or senior staff as applicable.
Establish and ensure compliant execution of the information security domain’s strategic vision, goals, and metrics; govern related policies, standards, and procedures.
Direct enterprise information security domain operations, including capacity, resilience, dependability, and assessment of how changing conditions affect system operations.
Develop, review, and communicate information security risk management policies and procedures in partnership with the CISO and senior leaders, ensuring alignment with industry best practices and regulatory requirements.
Represent USAA in discussions with external regulators about the assigned information security domain.
Oversee continuous monitoring of cybersecurity activities and alert senior management to potential risks, compliance issues, and operational inefficiencies.
Develop, design, and deliver a sustainable governance and assurance model across multiple domains and the enterprise.
Identify, monitor, and evaluate operational solutions that reduce information security risk, meet compliance requirements, and improve workforce efficiency, business agility, and scalability.
Promote information security awareness across the enterprise and external security community.
Manage organizational budgets and manpower as a financial steward, ensuring resources cost-effectively meet organizational needs.
Build and oversee a team through recruiting, development, retention, coaching, support, performance management, and other managerial activities.
Ensure risks associated with business activities are identified, measured, monitored, and controlled according to risk and compliance policies and procedures.